ST. CLAIRSVILLE — With the continued high COVID case count, one might think the omicron variant is ravaging Eastern Ohio, but health administrators Robert Sproul of Belmont County and Garen Rhome in Harrison County said the variant has not been detected locally.

“Not that we’ve seen yet,” Sproul said, referring to omicron. “Well, there’s always a little bit of a delay.”

Rhome expressed a similar sentiment last week. On Thursday, Sproul explained that after a positive test it may take weeks before officials can positively identify the omicron variant.

Sproul said Belmont County has been averaging 60-70 new COVID cases per day, or about 420-490 per week. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s COVID data tracker, the county had 269 new cases the past seven days.

Sproul said Belmont County had 669 active cases as of Thursday morning, with 151 COVID-related deaths since the pandemic began. Sproul touched on new guidance from the Ohio Department of Health.

“So now, people who are fully vaccinated and not symptomatic, you can go back to work with a mask on … ,” Sproul said, referring to people who may have been exposed to the coronavirus.

The state also reduced its recommendations for isolation from 10 days to five.

Rhome said health officials are being overwhelmed in Harrison County with cases, but not omicron. Harrison County’s case rate per 100,000 population has skyrocketed to 432, which he said is fairly extreme for a sparsely populated county of just under 15,000 people. Rhome said Wednesday saw 40 new cases reported with another 30 expected before the end of the week.

“So, it’s probably going to be close to 70, 75 in the last week,” he said.

That is not the highest the county has seen in a week’s time – numbers reached more than 120 at least once – but Rhome said 75 is pretty high. He said hospitals are reaching out to the public to please take precautions and “reduce the burden” on them with all the hospitalizations that are occurring and continuing to climb.

Rhome said another record was broken by the state of Ohio this week, recording over 20,000 new cases in just a 24-hour period.

“It is truly becoming overwhelming for the hospitals to care and to operate in emergency departments and then keep people locally …” he said. “It’s really starting to hit harder, harder than ever before across the entire state of Ohio, particularly in the Cleveland area.”

The case rate bears that out, listing 1,621 cases per 100,000 people in the Cleveland area, according to the CDC.

Rhome said the number of hospitalizations occurring with this virus are the result of respiratory effects people are experiencing in more severe cases. He said people obviously don’t go to the hospital when not feeling sick and will not get admitted if they’re not, but the effects of COVID are something different.

“But that is an absolute rock solid measure of the current state of spread and the level of care that folks are needing,” Rhome said of the hospitalizations.

He continues to stress that most of those hospitalized with the virus are unvaccinated at 92.5% of patients in Ohio.

“All that does is continue to demonstrate how effective … the vaccine has been in preventing severe symptomatic hospitalized disease,” Rhome said.

Rhome also reported four additional COVID deaths confirmed from November.

When it comes to Monroe County, 66 cases have been reported since last week, according to the CDC. Cases per 100,000 are at 483 with a population just under 14,000.

Officials in Monroe County did not respond to voice messages left seeking comment.